Unity constantly freezes since the update to 4.1

0) Unity 4.01 worked fine on the latest OS X.
1) Got the update message and installed 4.1. (404 when trying to access the update url)
2) Unity doesn't work anymore. Freezes (Apple's spinning wheel) for seconds between each interaction/change/click/every few seconds in the IDE.
3) Deleted the new version and installed the old one, problem remains.
4) Deleted the old one and reinstalled the latest version, problem remains.

FWIW, and this should go without saying, but going back to 12C60 (OSX 10.8.2) from Sunday has me rocking again.

What concerns me is that every single time OSX and/or Xcode is updated along side a new version of Unity, we have to fear our projects becoming completely borked. I know I should've learned my lesson from the last major conflict (Unity 3.x + Xcode 4.x.x or something?) but it has been a tad smoother for quite awhile.

I honestly don't recall this being ever being an issue with my PC's. I think most new apps still only req. Vista and newer, yet one tiny OSX maintenance update breaks software? What in the world is going on that is making it difficult for Unity to remain stable?

Support here is discouraging to say the least, so I'm not surprised this will fall by the wayside. Notice my thread regarding this issue has fallen off the front page, without even a mention that perhaps someone is looking into it. More-so you'll see lots of threads here in Support that have single digits in replies with only a few in the tens of responses, and many with zero.

I hate to be 'that guy' but far too many times have my threads been completely ignored, questions I considered reasonable and only posted after I attempt to research an issue myself.

When you factor in how much I, and any Pro user has spent on the software and assets, that ANY support needed, such as Unity being effectively broken, would be taken very seriously, even if it's only happening to the few of us. A simple "...we've noted your question and looking into the problem". Heck if the answer is completely foreign and a solution unknown, then at least offer that perhaps it's a tougher problem, but don't just ignore it and hope it goes away.

Do we need a private Pro support forum?

Is Support intentionally lacking to 'encourage' users to pay for Premium Support? (I know this is a bit conspiratorial but it's not implausible)

Is there an alternative way to contact Unity support outside of these forums? This seems needless else why have the Support forum in the first place.

To be clear, I'm always very happy with my experience with Unity, and I rarely have issues that make me unhappy enough to warrant my little 'soap boxing' here on the forums. I'm going to assume that Unity has to be aware by now that 10.8.3 can break Unity for users. I'm aware that the general sentiment to these forums is for 'users to help users', but the consistent lack of attention from Unity is frustrating.

Nothing changes on my end and I just learn to adapt and continue development, but to say I'm not disappointed would be disingenuous.

Somehow i'm glad i'm not the only one as i'm quite good in finding bugs/glitches/quirks due to that i sometimes approach things from a different angle or due to having not only mainstream projects. It often takes some further time until others run into those issues then as well, which is kind of lost time on my side for writing workarounds.

On a less serious note: It also helps to avoid possible paranoias for licence specific code like "if taumel then screw things up a bit". On the other hand maybe someone was just clever enough to add someone from a random list, so that it appears to be a more "normal behaviour".

Unity Technologies

These issues are definitely something to report bugs for. If possible, please do so from the instance of Unity that is crashing or beachballing - that way we get the relevant editor.log. When you submit a bug, reproduction steps are important, if we can't reproduce the issue then we most likely can't fix it.

I can't rewind the system due to different reasons but also wiping Unity away from the machine (at least as far as i know where Unity leaves its footprints ({package, prefs, licence, cache, asset store, project settings, demo project, mono, .?.}, asking for a new licence, ...) doesn't change a thing about it and as i have *surprise* work to do as well i meanwhile utalised another computer, which sucks (a: generally, b: especially because i'm not at my office but on the road).

I sent a couple of reports (plus hang report) already, those with the upset mood.

@Unity
If you need further input, you know my email address.

The reproduction is pretty easy. Take my computer (specs have been sent, OSX 10.8.3), install the update over 4.0.1, launch Unity and the issues occur instantly, no matter which project is open, not matter which V4 version you install/try then.

Hmmm, regarding rewinding (TimeMachine) I had no problems. Unless I'm mistaken that restore point is a complete picture of my system at that time, so it's as if the following day never happened; Unity is fine (thankfully!)

The 404 issue with the update server sounds like to me you are using a loop-back hosts file (I don't blame you) and in the file are entries for google-analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com. The update check and asset stores use those. The freezing is probably when Unity is trying to access resources to setup the Asset Store window.

You will need to comment out those lines in the hosts file to get it to work.

I agree Unity Technical Support isn't much help. I specifically asked them for a list of servers Unity connects to when Unity runs and they didn't answer.

Maybe I need to buy one of those Premium Platinum Goumet Service Support accounts to get some of that Unity Love.

Well given the abuse of html/js/and other scripting languages by SEOs and far less scrupulous people Unity should know that computers and accounts generally aren't being broken into via Ma Pa Kettle's weak passwords and a password list program.

@taumel ...oh heck, I'm definitely gonna thank you, as apparently we're the only people encountering this problem and you're actively trying to find an answer...and that means I'm not a crazy person!

@goat ...wow that's really interesting actually, but are you suggesting taumal and I are using loop-back host files, or Unity is? I'm not going to pretend I completely understand what you wrote, but I get the gist. Hmmm...

@goat
Interesting input, thanks, the only thing is that i'm more or less using a vanilla installation of OS X 10.8.3, things worked properly before, i don't use loop-back hosts for the system. What i have active in Chrome(!) is the usual stuff like Flash-/Ad-Blockers plus Ghostery. But even if i disable Ghostery there or put unity3d.com on the whitelist it doesn't change a thing aout the hangs.

The problem with Technical Support, from a more common pro user's point of view, in my opinion is that it takes too long to get feedback and fixes for critical issues plus as i wrote before the releases often aren't on a quality/mature level i expect a software like this to be. This was okay in the beginning but it isn't now anymore. This might be okay if you don't mind hanging around for a couple of days/weeks but it can cost money if you have to be productive.

@SteveB
Yeah, i know that feeling. You might want to record&upload a video which illustrates the issue. Most people enjoy watching movies.

Are they? Antenna Tree came said one thing about bug reports in my initial thread and of course Cecilie here, but that's it. Both mention bug reports (to which I keep mentioning I can't offer since I had to restore my machine to be productive). I don't believe this is being taken seriously considering no one else seems to have the problem, or we're the only two guys who have all our software completely up to date.

Regardless, my machine too is as basic as you can get. In fact I don't even use any special software for ad-block or anything-block for that matter. I'm a PC guy (where I do have tons of protection active) and use the iMac/Macbook Pro strictly for iOS development. So however OSX/Xcode/Unity come is how my machine is setup. The only thing I did do was turn off Spotlight, but otherwise barebones.

Again, I fixed the issue quickly so there are no bug reports and nothing I can do to demonstrate whats happening, though it's not all that mysterious. Unity beachballs and every action I attempt takes 15 - 20 seconds to 'execute'.

Goats theory is interesting but I'm not willing to go through this process(upgrading and potentially restoring again, which takes 6+ hours) if in fact it doesn't work. At the very least I'd like Unity to humor us and engage in some theory discussion about what could be causing it, just as Goat offered sight unseen.
I have not had an issue with any upgrades of the OS, Xcode nor Unity since 2009, so I'd appreciate the benefit of the doubt that this is something worth investigating. I don't want to now start being fearful that when I upgrade that something is going to go wrong and nothing will be done about it.

@goat
Interesting input, thanks, the only thing is that i'm more or less using a vanilla installation of OS X 10.8.3, things worked properly before, i don't use loop-back hosts for the system. What i have active in Chrome(!) is the usual stuff like Flash-/Ad-Blockers plus Ghostery. But even if i disable Ghostery there or put unity3d.com on the whitelist it doesn't change a thing aout the hangs.

The problem with Technical Support, from a more common pro user's point of view, in my opinion is that it takes too long to get feedback and fixes for critical issues plus as i wrote before the releases often aren't on a quality/mature level i expect a software like this to be. This was okay in the beginning but it isn't now anymore. This might be okay if you don't mind hanging around for a couple of days/weeks but it can cost money if you have to be productive.

@SteveB
Yeah, i know that feeling. You might want to record&upload a video which illustrates the issue. Most people enjoy watching movies.

Unity said that they are investigating the issue.

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OK, the hosts file loopback what caused my version of Unity to hiccup and it's platform for independent. Most other privacy protection software doesn't like google-analytics.com websites.

@taumel ...oh heck, I'm definitely gonna thank you, as apparently we're the only people encountering this problem and you're actively trying to find an answer...and that means I'm not a crazy person!

@goat ...wow that's really interesting actually, but are you suggesting taumal and I are using loop-back host files, or Unity is? I'm not going to pretend I completely understand what you wrote, but I get the gist. Hmmm...

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On Mac it's just a file /etc/hosts that, eg, you enter in something like this

127.0.0.1 google.analytics.com #

and osX will use that hostname entry when it looks up google-analytics.com before it tries to use the dns client to look up that hostname. Unless you change the osX config file to use dns before /etc/hosts lookup that is the way it works, discounting other lookup services like ldap.

You could enter in the real IP of google-analytics.com in your hosts file but they are typically load balanced with multiple IPs which sometimes changes so you wouldn't what to do that.

It's a means of stopping access to your computer activity from advertising activities (and hackers too as they often try to inject advertising streams with malicious code and often try to make their malicious code look like advertising streams) because 127.0.0.1 is actually your local computer and so the resource being looked for won't be found unless your computer has a copy which it won't.

...where is this host file, what exactly would I be looking for or looking to add and is this still speculation or something that you're certain is happening? If so why did this not happen before updating OSX to 10.8.3...I have to be little has changed with regards to google-analytics no?

If you're referring to my hosts file in ...HD/Private/Etc/hosts ...it's devoid of anything useful as I suspected.

### Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost

If you're referring to my hosts file in ...HD/Private/Etc/hosts ...it's devoid of anything useful as I suspected.

Is there another specific to Unity that you may be talking about?

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Yes, I say that every time I look under the hood of my car but of course it's far from being devoid of useful information.

127.0.0.1 localhost / loopback is more important than you could ever realize.

I mentioned this because Taumel happened to mention Unity on his machine could no longer connect to the update server to check for a new version.

That was the case for myself as well. My case was caused by entries for *.google-analytics.com in the hosts file; but Taumel's was not. I missed on the first read (OK, ignored but then these are os X logs) the probable case of Taumel's problem is a configuration file that was messed up: Chrome, os X, or Unity Remote but something in a services configuration file that os X does not like.

Hmmmm, if indeed it is the profiler, then I would share the issue as I always have the profiler tabbed. I'm assuming that even if it isn't in focus that even just having it active (but not visible) still causes the unresponsiveness.

Unity Technologies

Our developers have looked at this issue and they say that it is related to the GPU timer queries. This means that it is something that only Apple can fix. We will report this to Apple, but we can not guarantee that the issue will be solved. If the issue will affect many users, what we can do is to disable the GPU profiling with specific graphic cards/OS X.

The graphic card in question seems to be:
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.4GHz and 2.53GHz configurations; or 512MB of GDDR3 memory on 2.66GHz configuration
- Intel HD Graphics with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared with main memory5

If you have this issue based on the above mentioned graphic cards please submit a bug and PM me the case number so we can get a better idea of how many users are experiencing this issue.

It seems that these days you have to build fan groups to get stuff fixed. I have no idea if this will really lead to something or if they just try to calm down people by saying so. The issue exists since more than a month by now and whilst it is a critical one, there still is no workaround available. Beside of the lack to provide a solution it also illustrates how bad QA is working, at least on the Mac side. Although the Mac world is a lot less complex you're still running way too easy into problems.

I'm still confused when reading through the tiny number of fixes with each release. During all those years a part of me has given up hope that Unity will ever turn into a rock solid product. So, you continue to write workarounds wherever you can and start new projects which can be done without Unity without it. It seems that Unity is sitting way too comfortable in their chair and lacks the appropriate mindset/philosophy/resources/talent/? wanting to release mature software. I thought that a couple of those higher budgeted more famous Kickstarter projects would also help to motivate them building a better product but so far it hasn't happened.

David Helgason loved to say "It will only get better." when problems showed up in the earlier days. I leave it up to him why not being able to use the (CPU) profiler anymore is an enhancement exactly. My impression after using Unity for almost 8 years is that the software got a lot more capable (excluding the gui) but the issues about releasing not good enough thought through and properly tested builds plus providing fixes remain.

Before OS X 10.8, the timer queries on Mac+nvidia were "only" returning bogus data. We had a detection for that, and displayed a message "hey, invalid data was returned". We did not have a detection in place for "will the driver freeze inside the driver?", since hey that's fairly hard to detect - the freeze happens inside the driver.

What I'm doing now, is I'll just flat out disable GPU profiler on any Mac+nvidia combination. It was always either wrong data, or starting with 10.8, a freeze anyway. And they maybe, just maybe, someday Apple will fix timer queries in their drivers.

From what I can tell, this profiler freeze is not Unity version specific at all - it just started happening on Macs with nvidia GPUs starting with 10.8.

I have this issue too - MBP 330M. Sent a crash report etc. Would be nice to see a workaround for this as I've just paid out for a Pro license and have yet to see anything more than a crash from the profiler 8(

Unity Technologies

I have this issue too - MBP 330M. Sent a crash report etc. Would be nice to see a workaround for this as I've just paid out for a Pro license and have yet to see anything more than a crash from the profiler 8(

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See my post above - this is an OS X 10.8.3 driver regression. We are preparing a workaround for Unity 4.1.3 (soon); or perhaps you could downgrade to a previous OS X version in the meantime (no idea if that's possible for you).

See my post above - this is an OS X 10.8.3 driver regression. We are preparing a workaround for Unity 4.1.3 (soon); or perhaps you could downgrade to a previous OS X version in the meantime (no idea if that's possible for you).

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Thanks for the info Aras. Looking forward to the workaround 8). Hope Apple can sort this mess out with 10.8.4

See my post above - this is an OS X 10.8.3 driver regression. We are preparing a workaround for Unity 4.1.3 (soon); or perhaps you could downgrade to a previous OS X version in the meantime (no idea if that's possible for you).

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Finally, great to have found some answers as my email to support responded with "Reinstall the editor". Is there a way to disable GPU profiling from our end NOW until the update comes out?

See my post above - this is an OS X 10.8.3 driver regression. We are preparing a workaround for Unity 4.1.3 (soon); or perhaps you could downgrade to a previous OS X version in the meantime (no idea if that's possible for you).

For what it's worth, I'm running on both MAC and Windows. I have OSX 10.9, 10.7.5, Windows 8 and Windows 7. Since upgrading to Unity 4.x I've had constant freezing. Sometimes it's when loading a new level, or saving a level in the editor, but most annoying is that game freezes often. Sometimes just hitting run before the in game load screen ever comes up, to being fully immersed in game and having it hang. When this happens the only option is to hard kill Unity. I don't think this is a MAC issue, it's across the board. I'm still using the free version, nearing the point of upgrading to Pro, but until this issue is stabilized I wont be upgrading. At this point I can't release my beta in this state, so now I'm stuck.

I get no errors in the debugger, just freezes. I try doing a release build, with the same issues.

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